When Your Husband Won’t Pull His Weight: Wife or Pack Mule?

Growing up among powerful, exhausted women

When I think about the word “strong woman,” I still picture my mother standing by the door in the dark winter mornings of Manitoba, shrugging into her heavy coat.

Winters here can be brutal. The kind of cold that takes your breath away and freezes your eyelashes. Yet morning after morning, she bundled herself up, smoothed her hair, picked up her purse, and walked eight blocks through the frozen prairie to her job as a secretary, what we now call an administrative assistant.

My grandmother lived with us and watched over us while my mother worked. As a young divorcee, my mom did not have much choice. She bought her own little house and did what she could to make ends meet. There was no safety net. No second income. No partner sharing the weight.

Just grit and the determination to be responsible for her children.

My friends’ homes looked very similar. The women in our neighbourhood were working outside the home throughout the 1970s, but not because anyone was cheering them on with cute “girl boss” slogans. They were working because the men in their lives often could not, or would not, carry their share.

Some of the men were alcoholics. Some were chronically unemployed. Some grossly under-employed. Some were physically present but emotionally absent. Others seemed to want a mother rather than a partner, someone to cook for them, manage the house, soothe their moods, and quietly carry the finances while they dabbled with hobbies or worked just enough to qualify for the dole.

This was the working poor. Broken marriages. Men who were defeated, addicted, or plain lazy.
And in the middle of all of this, stood the women, carrying it all.

As a young girl, I watched my mother trudge through the snow, head down, determined. I did not have the language for it back then, but what I saw was this:

Women were powerful, yes, but they were also being used like pack mules.
They carried the weight of the home, the full emotional responsibility of the children, and, in many cases, the weight of the men.

And all of this got quietly written into my understanding of what it meant to be a woman.

The “liberation” that doubled the load

At the same time, the women’s liberation movement was rising. Women were fighting for equal pay for equal work, for access to education, for a say in their own financial future. This was, and is, a fair, realistic, and deeply just cause.

But something complicated happened on the ground in neighbourhoods like mine.

The story that landed in many of our homes went something like this:

A good woman earns her own money and shares all of it with the men in their lives.
A good woman is not a burden to anyone so don’t draw attention to how much you do, always accentuate whatever the man in your life is doing.
A good woman is the sole caretaker of her children.
A good woman keeps the food train coming, so no matter what —breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks are her responsibility for the rest of her life.
A good woman does not complain otherwise she is a nag.
A man’s ego is fragile so try not to say or do anything to negatively impact it. The male ego trumps character.

So we ended up with a strange hybrid:

Women were told, “You can do anything,” but what many of us heard in practice was, “You must now do everything.”

Liberation gave opportunity, and that was good.
But the expectations did not shift around us. Men were not necessarily being called into the same level of emotional labour, household responsibility, or relational maturity. In many families, they kept their hobbies, their leisure, their entitlement to rest.

The women picked up a career.
The men kept their boat.

The script I married into

Like many girls in my neighbourhood, I married young and started having children early. I carried into my marriage a deep conditioning: it was my job to take care of everyone and everything.

I believed that:

A man needs his hobbies.
My job was to cook, do laundry, and take care of all aspects of the children’s lives.
I was to plan birthdays, holidays, vacations, and family gatherings.
I would remember every school form, appointment, and “special day” at school.
And on top of all of this, the highest priority placed on my shoulders was that I needed to earn money and be a top earner.

I was also taught that a good woman shares all of her money. Before the local boy and I married, I had a savings account I had carefully built up. He wanted to buy a car, and the plan was that we would share it. I handed over all of my savings for that car. I never drove it once. That was the beginning. From there, my money flowed into his quests and his decisions: vehicles, projects, whatever he chose. He chose everything. The house, the vehicles, and his big array of tools. By the time I left, I think I walked away with a broken earring and not much else to my name.

From the very beginning, I was instructed that “he does not eat leftovers.” That set the tone. I learned quickly that meals had to be fresh, hot, and ready, no matter how tired I was. The message was clear: his preferences would be protected, my energy would not.

The expectations from the local boy I married were shaped by what he had seen in his own home.

His mother worked hard, carried the finances, did the grocery shopping and cooking, coordinated everything related to the children, and generally kept the house and family functioning. His father earned a low income, built himself a yacht from a kit, and sailed alone every summer.

His mother became my mother-in-law, and whether she meant to or not, she reinforced the script I already held. I remember her saying, “A man needs his hobbies, at least he is not at the beer parlour.”

The quiet message was this:

A good wife is the cook, baker, laundry service, planner, holiday maker, present shopper and wrapper, the one who remembers everyone’s birthdays, and the one who earns the money and increases her qualifications so the family stays afloat.

I recall him saying when finances were low before Christmas, “Oh well, I guess we are not having Christmas.” That one sentence was his way of stepping back, making it clear he was not taking any responsibility or ownership over the problem. It was not his burden to solve. The unspoken message was: If there is going to be Christmas, you will have to figure it out.

So I did.

I promptly expanded the limit on the credit card and ensured my children had Christmas. After that, I decided every January to buy a Canada Savings Bond so that by December there would be money set aside. With that money my children had their Christmas, and often other necessities as well. It was clear that this was my job to figure out. The weight of “how will we provide?” never landed on his shoulders. It landed squarely on mine.

I remember walking in the door after a full day and a long commute, finding him lying on the couch with his arms crossed. When I asked if anything was pulled out for dinner, he said, “Don’t look at me.” My children were hungry, and I distinctly remember starting dinner with my coat still on.

So I did what I believed a “good woman” was supposed to do.

My chosen profession meant that if I wanted better pay, I needed more education. That translated into multiple university degrees. On some of the coldest days, I drove or bussed an hour and a half to get to the university after long, stressful days at work. There was no such thing as online courses at that time. You had to be there in person and engaged in all discussions.

My job did not wrap up neatly at 5 p.m. There were lesson plans, paperwork, marking, report cards, meetings. I did this in the evenings after making supper, managing homework, folding laundry, and making sure permission slips were signed. I did manage to get him to make lunches, which I often provided homemade baking.

I did it without question.
I did it because I thought this was normal.
I did it because I thought this was what love and responsibility looked like.

Inside, I felt less like a powerful woman and more like a pack mule. No wonder I chose jobs where I felt the same.
But back then, I did not see it.

Carrying the spiritual load alone

On top of the practical and financial load, there was the spiritual load.

When we were dating, I believed we were on the same page about faith and church. I took seriously the call to raise children who knew and loved Jesus. I imagined a home where we would worship together, pray together, and grow together in Christ.

After we married, everything shifted.

Sunday mornings turned into battlegrounds. Instead of peaceful preparation for church, there were arguments, eye rolls, and resistance. The children could feel the tension. I became “the one forcing the family” to go to church. The one dragging everyone out the door while being painted as the problem.

I was the one urging, “We need to be there. We need to learn about Jesus. This matters.”
He was the one digging in, resisting, and making it as difficult as possible.

Eventually, I gave up on trying to get the whole family there every week. The exhaustion and conflict wore me down. Stepping back did not bring peace. It simply left a vacuum. Looking back now, I wish I had just gone myself and let the children see their mother, steady and faithful, choosing Christ even when her husband would not.

I was functioning as the spiritual leader of the home, while still trying to respect a man who was not leading spiritually, emotionally, or practically. That mismatch did not just strain the marriage. It sowed confusion in the hearts of our children who remember Sunday mornings as conflict riddled and painful.

When the cracks in the script appeared

Over time, the cracks started to show in every direction.

My then husband worked a clean nine to five job. He did not have to take any work home from the office. His evenings were his. The rhythm of his life outside of work was predictable: supper, television, tinkering with hobbies, more television.

Meanwhile, I was effectively working four jobs:

My full-time paid work.
The unpaid labour of running a home and raising children.
The heavy demands of university courses, papers, and exams so I could keep advancing my salary. ( I honestly believe he thought they just handed me marks and degrees).
On top of that, there was the ongoing prep for my job in the evenings, the marking, the planning, the endless paperwork when I was in different roles that spilled far beyond the workday. And layered over everything, the pressure of being the spiritual engine for the family.

One day, the questions surfaced in my mind, and this time I did not push them down:

Why am I working three & four jobs while he works one?
Why am I the only one who cooks, especially when he refuses to eat leftovers?
Why am I the only one fighting for our children’s spiritual formation?
Why does he get evenings off as a default, while I collapse into bed at midnight, only to start again at dawn?

So I asked him, “Why do I have to do all of this?”

His answer landed like a brick:
“My mother did it, and so can you.”

In that moment, the script that had been silently shaping my life came into full view. This was not an accident. It was an expectation. It was entitlement. It was generational conditioning that said, “This is just what women do.”

Later, when I found myself in a job I hated, I tried to talk about it. I tried to open up about how drained and depleted I was. The response was not curiosity or care. It was dismissal:
“Your going to just have to do it. We need the money.”

The full day job, the evening prep, and the constant pressure of university courses stole time from my life. Time I will never get back. Time I longed to spend being present with my children instead of constantly hustling to keep everyone afloat.

To this day, there is a part of me that aches for those lost evenings and weekends. For the unhurried moments I wish I had with my kids when they were young and when they were teenagers.

And to hear glimmers of what this man now relays to my adult children is, quite honestly, delusional. He presents himself as the hard working man who sacrificed endlessly for the family. We all believed that narrative for a time, because that is how he framed it.

But the reality was very different.

Was it his fault?

This is where the story gets complicated.

Was it his fault that he had these expectations? In one sense, no. This is the script we both grew up in. In our neighbourhood, men were allowed to float and women were expected to carry the load. He watched his own mother do everything and absorbed the message that this was simply how life worked.

From his point of view:

Expecting hot, fresh meals and “no leftovers” felt normal.
Letting me do the emotional, relational and domestic labour felt normal.
Treating my university work and multi-job life as necessary, but not remarkable, felt normal.
Believing himself to be a “hard working man who respects women” felt normal.
Thinking that because he had hobbies and enjoyed working with wood nothing else was required, felt normal.

He did not see me because the script did not require him to. The system we both grew up in made his entitlement invisible to him and very visible to me.

But that does not mean he is innocent. It simply means he was unexamined.

Over time, every adult has opportunities to notice and change:

To see, “My wife is constantly working while I watch television every night.”
To come to realize, “I’m asking everyone in the family to work 2 or 3 jobs while I work only one.”

To hear feedback and actually let it sink in.
To repent, adjust, and grow.
To ask, “Is this fair? Is this loving?”

When those opportunities are ignored, the harm is no longer just conditioning. It becomes chosen blindness.

That is where my incredulity make sense.

Can you believe this man thinks he is respectful of women? He genuinely does. His definition of respect is built on a narrow frame:

“I do not physically assault or overtly chase women.”
“I bring home some money.”
“I get to make all the fun decisions.” (For example: When building the house he would pull rank— “I get to choose the floor plan, the finishings, and design of the basement. You don’t get a say in the house design, since I work with my hands, I know better.”

“Your money is my money and my money is my money.”

“I am not at the beer parlour.”

In that frame, he can tell himself and others, “I am a respectful man who works hard.” And if no one holds up a mirror, that story goes unchallenged.

I lived the cost of that story in my body, my time, my nervous system, and lost time with my kids.
He lived the comfort of that story and now retells it in a way that still protects his image.

Seeing that clearly is painful. It is also part of healing.

When the spiritual head refuses to lead

Scripture paints a very different picture of a husband and father.

The Bible calls men to love their wives as Christ loves the church, to nourish and cherish them, to live with them in an understanding way, and to use their strength to protect rather than to dominate. A husband is called to be the spiritual head of the home, not as a tyrant but as a servant leader who lays his life down for his family.

That includes:

Speaking of his wife with honour in front of the children no matter if married, separated or divorced.
Protecting her dignity, not shredding it behind her back.
Providing for the family without turning her into the sole provider and protector.
Guarding the spiritual climate of the home, not mocking or resisting the very faith she is trying to live out.

A woman should never need protection from her husband. That includes protection from his callous words and smear campaigns about her. A man who bad mouths his wife to their children, who dismantles her character, or paints her as the problem, is not protecting her. He is wounding the very people he is called to love and care for.

When a man wants to turn the woman into the protector and provider, everything begins to go haywire.

You cannot:

Work a woman to death (her physical and emotional health will suffer),
Ignore her emotional and relational needs,
Undermine her spiritually,
and still expect her to want to be with you when the children are grown.

When a man refuses his call to protect, provide, and lead spiritually, yet still demands the privileges of headship, he is not simply failing his wife. He is slowly destroying his own family. His children grow up watching the disconnect between his words and his actions. The oddities, excuses and self aggrandizing are evident and confusing. His wife grows tired, then numb, then detached, then blamed for leaving. The marriage becomes a shell long before the legal papers are filed.

Headship without humility is not biblical leadership. It is the worship of self and comfort, and the whole family pays the price.

A word to young women

If you are a young woman dating or thinking about marriage, I want to speak to you gently and clearly.

Do not only look for chemistry, shared hobbies, or how much fun you have together when life is easy. Ask harder questions.

Can this man provide? Not that you will never work or contribute, but does he have a settled willingness to shoulder the bulk of that responsibility, to work diligently, and to think about the long-term well-being of a family, not only his own comfort?
Can this man protect? Not in a macho, movie-hero way, but in the way he speaks and acts. Does he protect your dignity when you are not in the room? Does he take your safety, your heart, and your reputation seriously? A woman should never need protection from her husband, especially not from his temper, his contempt, or his gossip. If he mocks you now, rolls his eyes at you, or talks down about you to others, that will not magically improve with a wedding ring.
Is this man a spiritual leader? Not perfect, but humble and hungry for God. Does he take initiative in prayer, worship, and faith conversations? Does he honour God in the way he treats you? A man who will not follow Christ will not be able to love you the way Christ calls him to.

If you notice that you are already carrying the emotional, practical, financial, and spiritual load in the relationship while he coasts, pay attention. Marriage will not fix that. It will amplify it.

You deserve a partner who stands beside you, not overloads you with burdens you were never meant to carry. If you choose to have children you must choose a husband and father that will care for all of you without causing you distress.

What I see now in the coaching room

In our coaching practice, many men share that they feel unappreciated. And I want to say this clearly: feeling unappreciated is painful, and not all men are entitled or irresponsible. There are many good, faithful, hardworking husbands and fathers who truly carry their share and genuinely love the Lord.

But I also want to tell the truth from the other side.

Because for years, I felt deeply unappreciated too.

Unseen.
Taken for granted.
Spoken about as if I were simply “doing what needed to be done,” when in reality, I was carrying far more than my fair share, including the spiritual burden.

So when a man says in session, “I feel unappreciated,” we often gently explore a few questions:

What are you actually carrying?
What is your partner carrying?
Do you see the invisible labour she does every day?
Have you matched it with tangible, consistent partnership?
Are you leading spiritually, or resisting and undermining the very faith she is trying to live out?

Sometimes the answer is yes, and there is legitimate hurt on both sides.
Sometimes the answer is no, and the conversation opens a doorway into repentance, repair, and growth.

This is not about shaming men. It is about telling the truth so that both men and women can step into healthier, more honest, more equitable, and more Christlike relationships.

The invisible job description women never agreed to

If any of this is resonating with you, I want you to pause and consider something important:

You were handed a job description for womanhood that you never actually agreed to.

It might sound like:

“If I do not think about it, it will not get done.”
“If I drop a ball, someone will suffer, and it will be my fault.”
“It is easier to do it myself than to ask for help and deal with the fallout.”
“He works hard at his job, so I cannot ask for more help at home.”
“I should be grateful. Other women have it worse.”
“It is my job to keep everyone spiritually okay, no matter what he does or does not do.”

Over time, this invisible job description does not just exhaust your body. It erodes your sense of self.

You may notice:

Chronic fatigue and an underlying sense of resentment.
Feeling guilty when you sit down or rest.
Turning to food or drink to bring you comfort.
A sense that your needs are “extra” or “too much.”
Difficulty naming what you actually want, beyond what everyone else needs.
A low-grade grief that is hard to put into words.

Many women in my coaching practice arrive in this state. They use phrases like:

“I just keep going.”
“I do not know who I am without being productive.”
“I am so tired, but I do not see a way off this treadmill.”

They are powerful, capable, deeply loving women.
But they feel like pack mules.

A faith-based reality check: God did not design you to be a beast of burden

From a Christian perspective, the idea that a woman’s worth is measured by how much she can carry without complaint does not line up with the heart of God.

Jesus invites us:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
(Matthew 11:28–30)

This is not a call to laziness or abandonment of responsibility.
It is a call to shared yoke, shared weight, shared partnership with God and, in healthy relationships, with one another.

If your version of “Christian womanhood” sounds more like:

“Do more, carry more, say less, and never need anything,”

That is not biblical servanthood. That is exploitation dressed up as virtue.

Healthy biblical relationships call both men and women into distinct responsibilities, mutual honour, and mutual sacrifice. Not one person quietly carrying the entire load so that everyone else can be comfortable.

Men need to learn to love their wives properly. Take the burdens off of her so that she can be the calm and loving wife and mother God wants her to be. Men need to step up!

Women you are not called to be a pack mule.
Women you are called to be a whole person.

How to begin putting down the load

If you see yourself in this story, I am not going to pretend that change is simple. These patterns are deep, generational, and often tied to survival. But you can begin to shift them, step by small step.

Here are a few places to start.

1. Name the story you grew up in

Take some time to reflect:

What did I learn about what women “should” do?
What did I learn about what men “do not have to” do?
Who carried the emotional, financial, spiritual, and household load in my family of origin?
How has that script shown up in my adult life and relationships?

Sometimes simply naming the story helps you realize, “Wait a second. I never agreed to this.”

2. Do a “load inventory”

On paper, list everything you carry in a typical week. Include:

Paid work and commuting
Household tasks (meals, cleaning, laundry)
Mental load (scheduling, remembering, anticipating needs)
Emotional labour (reassuring others, smoothing conflict, checking in)
Spiritual labour (initiating church, prayer, devotions)
Extended family responsibilities
Church or community commitments

Then ask:

What here genuinely lines up with my values and calling?
What here could be shared, delegated, reduced, or released?
Where am I doing things out of fear, guilt, or habit rather than conscious choice?

3. Have one honest conversation at a time

If you are in a relationship, this is where it gets real.

Rather than dropping a lifetime of resentment in one conversation, choose one area to talk about. For example:

“I feel overwhelmed being the only one who plans meals and groceries. Can we look at how to share this more fairly?”
“I need us both to be involved in planning holidays and birthdays, not only me. Let us sit down and divide tasks.”
“I cannot be the only one caring about our family’s spiritual life. I need you to engage here too.”

You are not demanding perfection. You are asking for partnership.

Is it risky? Yes.
Will everyone respond well? Not always.
But honesty is essential if you want something healthier than quiet resentment.

4. Experiment with “good enough” instead of “superhuman”

Sometimes the pack mule pattern is reinforced by perfectionism.

Try gentle experiments like:

Buying a simpler meal rather than cooking from scratch every time.
Letting other people help wrap gifts or live with less elaborate holidays.
Saying no to gatherings you truly do not have capacity for.
Leaving a task undone and tolerating the discomfort that follows.
Going to church yourself, even if no one else comes, and letting that be enough for that day.

These are not acts of selfishness. They are acts of recovery.

5. Invite men to grow, do not just silently compensate

If you are raising sons, loving a partner, or coaching young men, part of shifting this pattern is inviting them into a different story of manhood.

A story where:

Caring for children is not “helping,” it is parenting.
Cooking, cleaning, and planning are basic adult skills, not gendered chores.
Spiritual leadership looks like humility, consistency, and care, not control.
Emotional availability and responsibility are marks of maturity, not weakness.

This is not about hating men. It is about refusing to cover for immaturity that harms everyone, including them.

Questions for reflection

You might want to journal or pray through a few of these:

Where in my life do I feel most like a pack mule instead of a person?
What fear rises up when I even imagine putting one piece of that load down?
Whose voice do I hear in my mind when I consider resting or saying no?
What would a “shared load” look like in my home, even in small ways?
In what ways have I been carrying the spiritual burden alone, and what might need to change?
What might God be inviting me to lay down, not because it is unimportant, but because it no longer needs to be carried by me alone?

You are allowed to be powerful without being crushed

Being a powerful woman does not mean being endlessly available, endlessly productive, and endlessly self-forgetting.

True strength includes:

The courage to tell the truth about what is not working.
The humility to ask for help.
The wisdom to rest.
The faith to believe that God’s design for you is more than constant exhaustion.

At Waypoint Wellness & Performance Coaching, I work with many women who are in this very wrestle. They love their families, they are deeply committed to doing what is right, and they are also deeply tired.

If you recognize yourself in these words and you would like a safe space to unpack your story, explore healthier patterns, and begin to lay down some of that invisible load, I would be honoured to walk alongside you.

You are not a pack mule.
You are a person, deeply loved by God, worthy of rest, partnership, and joy. I believe you also get to make some of the fun decisions too!

To reach out to George or Lesley for coaching support head over to the contact page. Click Here
Did you know Lesley is also an author?
Her book Blindsided: Help, Hope & Healing for Parents Coping with Estrangement has reached parents worldwide, offering strength and direction.
📖 See it here on Amazon